DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

Early Years: 1883-1949

Introduction

From its start as the Iowa State Normal School ‘s “Model School” (1883-1886), the Mathematics Department was distinguished by the many members who were highly productive faculty. The persistent goal of the math faculty was to demonstrate best teaching practices, to research and publish innovative curriculum, and to serve as leaders through professional organizations and meetings with other math teachers. There are few records of the philosophy of the Math Department over the early years. Also, research projects and publications were seldom documented.

As the decades unfolded, the “Model School’s” name was changed to the “Training School” and then became known as the “Campus School,” and finally “Malcolm Price Laboratory School.” The School’s Mathematics Department faculty from 1929 to 1949 included Mary C Anderson, Florence A Brown, Florence E. Brown, Florence E Correll, Glenadine Gibb, Vernon Heade, Dora Kearney, Ross Nielsen, and Mabel Turner. (link to Faculty Roster)

Cliff W. Stone

Cliff Stone began the long tradition of Lab School leadership in math education when he was hired as the Laboratory School’s head in 1914, a role enlarged in 1916 to include Directorship of the new Department of Teaching at the then Iowa State Teachers College . (The Iowa State Normal School became Iowa State Teachers College in 1909.) Stone forged a strong link between our Teachers College and the Teachers College of Columbia University in New York City, the oldest (1887) and largest graduate school of education in the United States.

Stone was born in Wisconsin in 1874 and was raised on a farm. He graduated from the State Normal School at Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1899, and soon after began his long career as a math teacher, principal, and director of teaching. 

As a principal in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1903, he focused on squaring math teaching with real world use. Stone and his colleagues concluded that arithmetic teachers were attempting to teach too many subjects to teach all of them well. To impress students with the use of arithmetic in real world affairs, Stone urged math teachers to adopt concrete class projects. A project to show the value of measurement involved a 7th-grade class in building a house to scale. A second 7th-grade math class discovered the various applications of percentage when each member was placed as a new employee in a hypothetical grocery store. (These anticipated the project-based Lab School math and science curricula that took flight in the 1950s.) 

Stone built on his real-world focus by becoming an early pioneer in math testing. He pursued his studies at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1904 and a Ph.D. in 1908. His doctoral dissertation, published that year, was titled Arithmetical Abilities and Some Factors Determining Them. This work established Stone’s lasting fame as the creator of the Stone Tests of arithmetic operations and reasoning. 

Stone’s national leadership in testing reveals why he was an ideal choice for Iowa State Teachers College in 1914 and its soon-to-be-opened Sabin Hall as a model Training School (as it was called then) for grades K-12. Finding that most work in U.S. math education was being done in arithmetic operations, Stone published in 1916 Standardized Reasoning Tests in Arithmetic and How to Utilize Them, refining his 1908 reasoning test. This book was revised and enlarged in 1921 and has been reprinted many times since—the last in 2010.

Stone’s life and work changed, however, when the United States entered World War I in April 1917. Stone taught as a member of the American Expeditionary Force University at Beaune, France. Following the war, he was hired away from ISTC to be Head of Education at the State College of Washington at Pullman (now Washington State University), where he served until his retirement in 1946.

Although only at Iowa State Teachers College for a few years, Stone ably launched the new model Training School on a rigorous scientific and philosophical path. He also promoted Eva May Luse in 1916 to be his Assistant Director of the Training School and then Acting Director during his leave of absence for the war. She would follow his leadership path.

Eva May Luse

Eva May Luse joined the Training School in 1904 but began first as a teacher of grammar, Latin, and English. Perhaps Dr. Stone influenced her toward math, which then became her specialty.

Luse was always growing and learning. In 1920, she was given a leave of absence to study and observe at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York City. 

In the fall of 1923, another leave allowed her to work on her doctoral degree at the University of Iowa. A member of Phi Beta Kappa there, she titled her 1925 dissertation Specific vs. General Learning in Narrow Mental Functions.

In 1929, the year she attended mathematics conferences in New York City and Bologna, Italy, Luse began authoring mathematics books with David Eugene Smith, the distinguished professor of mathematics at Columbia and author of countless books and articles on mathematics. Their joint books included Walks and Talks in Numberland (link to scanned pages or drop in pages) and The Problem and Practice Arithmetics, a set of texts for students from second to ninth grades. The latter book’s reviewer in a 1930 Journal of Education wrote “Every suggestion of pedagogical science is in the background for the teacher, while only an almost infinite variety of attractive devices with the latest facts and phrases, that appeal to children . . . are utilized.”

So prominent now was Luse in math education that in 1929 she was named one of three Americans to represent the United States and Canada on the International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics. In that role she assisted in conducting national surveys in the U.S. and in Canada concerning the teaching of math in the junior and senior high schools and in the first two years of college. In 1932, she represented the United States and Canada at the International Congress of Mathematics in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1935 came the last of the volumes with Smith and others, titled Canadian Problem and Practice Arithmetics.

Both Stone and Luse accomplishments are further detailed in the Faculty Profile website location. (link)